Wednesday, March 13, 2013

GOP Strategy: Dump Old Uneducated Christian Voters

The fiscal conservative media have joined the liberal media in the drumbeat to convince Republican Party strategists to abandon “Evangelical whites, tea-party Republicans, older voters, and whites that do not have a college degree.”

So, the establishment GOP thinks it has had difficulty reigning in the Tea Party voters, "well, they ain't seen nothing yet!" How many Republicans will be elected when the Christians support a new third party?

“I have any number of gay friends who are Republicans, but what makes me tick is that I have concerns that this is another issue that would limit the growth of the Republican party.”-- Dr. Jan van Lohuizen, former George W. Bush pollster

. . . “If you look at the crosstabs, the opposition [to gay marriage] is really concentrated in a few really small groups,” van Lohuizen says. “Evangelical whites, tea-party Republicans, older voters, and whites that do not have a college degree.”

. . . gay marriage enjoys majority support from all major religious confessions except white evangelical Protestantism — including mainline “non-evangelical” Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. And while a majority of whites without college degrees oppose gay marriage, majorities of whites with college degrees, and nonwhites of all education levels, support it.

Even among Republicans, opposition to same-sex marriage is increasingly tenuous, particularly along two axes. First, self-described tea-party Republicans oppose gay marriage 84/13, while Republicans who describe themselves as neutral toward or opposed to the Tea Party oppose gay marriage by smaller 62/34 and 52/47 splits, respectively. This is a more or less momentous split depending on how credible one finds evidence that tea-party membership is in sharp decline.

Second, and perhaps most critically, exit polling shows that 51 percent of Republicans under 30 support gay marriage in their state. If this datum alone holds, one might think, gay marriage is a fait accompli in the near to medium term. And indeed, the polls report just that feeling among the broader public: 83 percent of voters, supporters and opponents included, think that gay marriage will be legal nationally in the next five to ten years.

At yesterday's briefing for reporters at National Review's D.C. offices . . . I asked [Sen. Rand] Paul how Republicans would have to tweak their messages if they competed in California. What about immigration, what about gay marriage? I paraphrased a joke Paul had told last year in Iowa, after Barack Obama had flip-flopped -- sorry, EVOLVED -- on gay marriage, and Paul told social conservatives that Obama couldn't "get any gay-er."

"I've been told that joke wasn't very funny," deadpanned Paul. "I'm not going to change who I am or what I believe in. I am an old-fashioned traditionalist. I believe in the historical definition of marriage. That being said, I think contracts between adults -- I'm not for limiting contracts between adults. In fact, if there are ways to make the tax code more neutral where it doesn't mention the word marriage, then we don't have to redefine what marriage is. We just don't have marriage in the tax code. If health benefits are a problem, why don't we not define them by marriage? Why don't we say, you have another adult who lives in the house, and a kid who lives in the house can be part of family coverage? Then you don't have to redefine, and have people like myself, and people who live in the Southeastern part of the country, we don't have to change our definition of what we think marriage is, but we allow contracts to occur so there is more ability to [make] the law neutral."

. . . And Paul says this a month after Marco Rubio says marriage should be "left to the states."

In the aftermath of Mitt Romney’s defeat in last fall’s election, and the defeat of a myriad of Republican Senate candidates (establishment and Tea Party alike) in Romney’s wake, Republicans are getting no shortage of free advice.

. . . a fair amount has been written about the need to make the moral case for conservatism. But to be particularly effective, that case must transcend strictly material concerns. After all, the core of the case for what we now call “conservatism” is the revolutionary idea that every human being has a God-given right to be free. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.”